What happened to AI prompt marketplaces (and the one that used to live on this domain)
By The NeutronField editorsPublished Updated
Short answer
Prompt marketplaces sold the exact wording that got a good picture out of an AI image model. They boomed in 2022 and 2023, when early models were hard to steer. Newer chat-based models read plain sentences and rewrite prompts themselves, so most of those shops faded or changed; a few, like PromptBase, still trade.
- PromptBase opens, selling prompts for $1.99
- A prompt marketplace opens on this domain
- A dozen or more prompt marketplaces
- The marketplace on this domain closes
- PromptBase adds a subscription
From 2023 to 2024 this domain hosted the NeutronField prompt marketplace, which closed in 2024. This site is a new publication and is not affiliated with it.
What prompt marketplaces sold
A prompt marketplace sold text. A seller worked out a string of words that made a model such as DALL-E 2, Midjourney or Stable Diffusion produce a reliable look, posted example images, and charged for the words. In July 2022 TechCrunch described one of the first, PromptBase, which had launched that June: prompts sold for $1.99 and the site kept a 20% cut, with listings tested only on DALL-E 2 and GPT-3 at the time (TechCrunch, 2022).
The premise was simple: early image models were unpredictable, so a prompt that worked had value. A buyer paid to skip hours of trial and error, and the example images were the proof.
The 2023 boom
By March 2023 TechCrunch counted a dozen or more marketplaces, with new ones appearing every month (TechCrunch, 2023). They tried different models: one paid creators a flat fee for each prompt it accepted, another recorded prompts on a blockchain and took 10% of each sale, others charged a commission on every trade. None of the operators TechCrunch spoke to would share revenue or usage figures, and the article flagged two problems early: moderating what was sold, and whether a prompt could be owned at all.
The marketplace on this domain (2023 to 2024)
From January 2023 this domain ran a marketplace called NeutronField, with the tagline "Share your AI text-to-image prompts!". Members posted prompts with example images and sold them; in a February 2024 capture listings were sorted by model (Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, Disco Diffusion, Craiyon) and by themes such as portraits, sci-fi and landscapes (Internet Archive, 2024). TechCrunch noted that it covered a wider range of models than most, that it banned prompts for celebrity deepfakes, graphic violence and copies of copyrighted characters, and that it also ran a shop for physical goods.
In May 2024 the marketplace was replaced by a short notice saying it no longer existed and that its team had decided to close the platform (Internet Archive, May 2024). The listings and member pages are gone, and this site has no access to them. If you bought a prompt there, we cannot help recover it; our About page explains how this publication came to use the name.
Why selling prompts got harder
The product depended on prompts being hard to write. That changed as image generation moved into chat assistants. In our own test for the ChatGPT and Gemini prompt guide, two plain sentences beat a carefully stacked list of tags on the same model, and both models followed the sentences closely.
The models also started rewriting prompts themselves. OpenAI's documentation says its chat model may revise a prompt before the image is drawn and returns the revised text (OpenAI API docs). When the model does that work for free, a list of magic words is worth less. Prompts are still useful as records and as starting points, which is why the shops that survived sell volume, templates and subscriptions rather than single secret phrases. What still matters is understanding what a word does: our art styles test and how image models work explain the mechanics a purchased prompt used to hide.
Where people trade prompts now
PromptBase is still running. In February 2026 it added a subscription alongside single sales: buyers pay $14 a month on an annual plan or $19 monthly for ten downloads a month, and creators earn $1.00 for each subscription download (PromptBase, 2026). Of the other marketplaces in the 2023 article, one now presents itself as a general AI chat app, and another's domain shows little more than its name when we checked on 2026-11-02. Most prompts today are shared for free, in galleries, guides and the tools themselves.
What a prompt can and cannot tell a buyer
A purchased prompt is a set of words, not a guarantee. The same prompt gives a different picture on a new model version, and most chat models do not let you reuse a seed. None of the files we have tested from Google or OpenAI stores the prompt inside the image, so a picture alone cannot prove which words made it.
If you sell images or prompts, keep your own record: the prompt, the model and version, the date and the file you kept. Our prompt log guide shows a simple format, and selling AI images covers what stock sites and shops ask you to declare. For prompts written by software rather than people, see image prompt generators.
Sources
- TechCrunch: A startup is charging $1.99 for strings of text to feed to DALL-E 2, 2022-07-29 (accessed 2026-11-02)techcrunch.com
- TechCrunch: A look at the budding market for the text that prompts AI systems, 2023-03-09 (accessed 2026-11-02)techcrunch.com
- Internet Archive: neutronfield.com, captured 2024-02-22 (accessed 2026-11-02)web.archive.org
- Internet Archive: neutronfield.com closure notice, captured 2024-05-30 (accessed 2026-11-02)web.archive.org
- PromptBase: Introducing PromptBase Select for Creators, 2026-02-12 (accessed 2026-11-02)promptbase.com
- OpenAI API docs: Image generation (accessed 2026-11-02)developers.openai.com
Questions
What is a prompt marketplace?
A website where people buy and sell the text prompts that produce particular results from AI models, usually with example images as proof. PromptBase, launched in June 2022, was one of the first.
What happened to the NeutronField prompt marketplace?
It ran on this domain from January 2023 and closed in May 2024, when its pages were replaced by a notice that the platform had been shut down. This site is a new publication and is not affiliated with it.
Is PromptBase still running?
Yes. PromptBase still sells individual prompts, and in February 2026 it added a monthly subscription that gives buyers ten downloads a month.
Can you still make money selling AI prompts?
Some sellers do, mostly in volume through larger marketplaces. Chat-based models now accept plain sentences and rewrite prompts themselves, which has made single prompts less valuable than in 2023.
Is the prompt saved in an AI image?
Not in the files we tested from Google and OpenAI, which carried a signed content credential but no prompt. Some open-model tools can save it as text in PNG files.
Related reading
- Made with AIAbout NeutronField: this domain's history, who writes here, how we test
- PromptsPrompts for ChatGPT and Gemini images: talking to a chat-based image modelWrite to ChatGPT and Gemini in plain sentences, not tag lists: say what the picture shows, where, in what light and medium, and the one detail that must be right.
- Made with AISelling AI images: what stock sites and marketplaces require you to declareSome marketplaces take AI images and some refuse them.
- Made with AIKeep a prompt log: your own record of how each AI image was madeA prompt log is a simple table you keep yourself: the date, the tool and model version, the full prompt, the settings and seed, which frame you kept, and a SHA-256 hash of the original file.